A few months ago, the team behind the Bored Apes (BAYC) announced the public sale of their metaverse “The Otherside”. This was the most anticipated mint of 2022, and boy, it did not disappoint. What got the buzz going was this trailer:
By now, you’re probably aware that I’m neck-deep in this industry and I was preparing for this for the past few weeks leading up to mint day.
Let me introduce you to Yugalabs first, before I dive deep into The Otherside and the gaming abilities it will have. For NFT collectors that are familiar with Yuga and the public mint, scroll down the strategy part.
YugaLabs – The 1-Year Company Worth $4 Billion
YugaLabs (aka Yuga) is the company behind the BAYC universe, which recently closed its first seed round of $450 million at a $4 Billion valuation.
One year ago Yuga released their first product, the BAYC NFTs. Within a year they successfully launched 2 other NFT collections which are the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC), and the Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC).
Just a few months ago, they launched their own currency called ApeCoin. Which is currently sitting at a market cap of $2.6 Billion at #37 on CoinGecko. You can find more details on $APE and their DAO in this article.
Not long ago, they surprised everyone by acquiring the IP of their biggest competitor collections: CryptoPunks and Meebits from developer LarvaLabs.
By adding these collections, YugaLabs now owns all of the top 3 highest trading volume PFP NFTs. And 6 out of the top 15.
By now, Yuga is the established leader of this space. This is one of the reasons their metaverse was highly anticipated by investors.
The Otherside Mint/Public Sale in Numbers
I’ll spare you the details leading up to the event. As there was a whole strategy attached to the public mint, which was announced to happen in “waves”, but sold out in wave 1. As this is in the past now, you can read up on those details on Twitter or other blogs.
Here are the facts of the 100k Otherside land deeds at public sale:
55k deeds of land sold out in 2,5 hours at 300 ApeCoin each (at the time of sale over $300 million)
15k deeds Airdropped to Investors and Team
35k deeds free mints for BAYC & MAYC holders
60,234 ETH (~ $168 Million) in gas burned
During public sale, each KYC’d wallet could mint a maximum of 2 deeds. With the amount of FOMO leading up to the event, investors were paying up to 5 ETH in gas, just to secure their mint quickly.
After it sold out quickly (2,5 hours), the majority of the NFT industry complained about the gas war that happened. However, the fact remains, that Yuga completed the biggest NFT mint in history. Bagging over $300 Million in sales. If you include the gas cost investors paid to get in, this mint cost nearly $500 Million.
Not too shabby.
More Stats
Here are a few more mind-blowing stats of the first 10 days:
Trading Volume: 247,000 ETH, which makes them the top 5 all-time trading volume of NFTs
34k Unique owners
Highest Sale 625 ETH
Within the first 4 days, it surpassed the volume of Sandbox and Decentraland. Which are the most popular Metaverses to date, trading for approximately 2 years.
Intro to The Otherside
According to their website: “The Otherside is a gamified, interoperable metaverse currently under development. The game blends mechanics from massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and web3-enabled virtual worlds. Think of it as a metaRPG where the players own the world, your NFTs can become playable characters, and thousands can play together in real-time.”
Got it?
In other words, it’s a digital world, in which we can own the land, own our characters, and have an in-game economy. All in a gamified environment, where we will have a purpose to keep developing our land or characters.
Fortnite meets World of Warcraft meets Axie infinity. Or along those lines. Here’s a small preview of the game:
And here’s a sneak peak of the First Trip, the tech demo from @Improbableio. Can’t wait to share the experience with you. pic.twitter.com/jgkf6wTrFB
— OthersideMeta (@OthersideMeta) May 12, 2022
There will be a total of 200,000 Otherdeeds (the land). The first 100,000 Otherdeeds sold out on April 30, 2022.
The second 100,000 Otherdeeds will be exclusively rewarded to Voyagers who hold Otherdeeds and contribute to the development of Otherside.
Every Otherdeed is a dynamic NFT, built as a collection of all of its elements, from resources to Kodas. Rather than a static representation of a piece of land, your Otherdeed is designed to evolve along with what you choose to do in the game
It’s time to play and build!
My Strategy For Picking Otherdeeds
The deeds have several things to consider. With limited details available about the game and world, the next part is mostly based on my assumptions and guesstimations.
1. The Environment & Sediment land combo
There are 5 Tiers of environment:
Infinite Expanse / Sludge – Tier 1
Cosmic Dream / Bog – Tier 2
Rainbow Atmos / Obsidian – Tier 3
Chemical Goo / Luster – Tier 4
Biogenic Swamp / Crimson – Tier 5
From what I understand today, is that these are the only traits that none-transferable. Other properties, like artifacts & Koda’s, can be moved off your land. While resources could potentially be transferable too.
The quality of land could be impacted by the environment and the size. Tier 5 is the largest land which gives you more potential to build, plant resources, and other stuff. While the quality of the ground (Sediment) might offer a better yield. The better the ground, the more you grow. The higher the recourse tier, the more you yield.
Does that make sense?
2. Location, Location
The Bored Ape Clubhouse is the center of the map, with the BAYC founders owning land right around it. Currently, the majority of the sales between 150-400 ETH are deeds that are extremely close to the center. Which makes it obvious to me, that investors are betting on location.
At first, I thought it would be a risk to bet on that.
Why?
Because we don’t know much about the gameplay. What if you can teleport in the game? That would make the location less relevant.
However, I discovered there are some “portals” on a few of the deeds. Which reduces the risk of teleporting in The Otherside.
Like in the real world, location is important. The lower the edition number was the deed, the closer you are to the center.
3. Artifacts
Artifacts are items you can use in the game. We don’t exactly know their utility yet, but each land has the possibility of having an artifact. My guess is that artifacts either improve the land or help increase the yield of resources. Another option would be that your character in the game can use them.
A few days ago, a deed with a 1/1 potion artifact was sold for 625 ETH.
Don’t fade artifacts, they could be tradable in-game and increase the benefits of your Otherside land.
4. Resources
As resources might be transferable, this becomes the least important factor to weigh in. However, if you’re looking for good deals to snipe. You better take these into consideration as well.
I usually look for lands that have 2 or 3 resources with at least one of them being Tier 3.
When I’m playing the game, I want to be yielding as much as I can. Even tho we don’t know the function of the different resources in The Otherside yet.
Each land could contain 4 resources (north, south, east, west). Every one of them has separate Tiers (from 1-3). The higher the tier, the better the yield of the resource.
5. Kodas
According to The official website: “Meet the Kodas, the primal beings that have ushered us into the Otherside. We don’t know why they’ve brought us here, or what their affinity to this land is. If you are lucky enough to meet a Koda, tread cautiously.”
The Kodas were randomly distributed on the Otherdeeds. Which made it a lottery if you’d get one. In the first week, lands that have a Koda on them sold between 15-500 ETH. It’s a wide range, but it obviously also depends on the previous 4 factors I posted above. On top of that, the Kodas have rarity as well which put investors on a hunt for the rarest ones.
The Kodas will be a separate 10k PFP collection. This includes 100 “Mega Kodas, which are special more rare versions. Yuga gave us a fair warning about them: “tread cautiously”. This leads me to believe they will play a significant role in the game.
I proceeded to purchase a Koda myself, on Environment 4, including an Artifact, and 2 resources (T2 + T3), at a decent location (number 23k).
With the breakdown of Otherdeeds above, do you like my buy?
Tools and Sites to Use
Now that you are more familiar with this new Metaverse. How do you get involved?
Since the first batch sold out, and the second batch will be rewarded to builders, players and holders. The only way to buy one is on the secondary market. The most volume will be at OpenSea. However, if you trade on LooksRare you can earn $Looks rewards and save on fees. While X2Y2 also has a reduction in fees.
If this is your first time buying an NFT, have a look at a previous guide I wrote on Buying PFP NFTs and setting up your hardware wallet for security.
If you want to find the rarity of land, check RaritySniper. While you can find the rarity of Koda’s on NFTgem.
And of course, don’t forget to check the Otherside’s Discord and Twitter for announcements and community sentiment.
Caution
If you’re new to the space, or even for the OG’s. Be careful clicking links of “new mint”, “airdrops” or different Otherside-related buys. There are a lot of savvy scammers out there, and they target people who are relatively new to the industry.
Only go through official links and channels of The Otherside.
Final Words
Thanks for sticking around till the end. I’ve spent most of my time these past days on the Otherside and I’m looking forward to starting playing and using the land.
We know Apecoin ($APE) will be the currency in this world, and I’m hoping for “play 2 earn” mechanics in the game.
The biggest unknown factor with The Otherside is the release date of the game. So far there’s no intel out there about when they plan to release a first or final version. So keep an eye out for announcements.
Besides metaverses, I’ve recently invested in a house and remodeled it inside out. It’s the complete opposite investment strategy of this blog. As metaverse land is highly speculative and risky, real estate in the “real world” is at low risk in my portfolio. I’m also looking into some different real estate opportunities, which could be my next blog.
As always, If you enjoyed this content make sure to share it with your friends and follow me on Twitter.
See you on the Otherside, my friends.